The Self Care 12-Week Challenge (Week 1)

Welcome to the first week of the 12-week self-care challenge for all of you caregiver’s families and professionals. This is about you taking care of you and filling your own cup. Ready? Here we go…

Week1Challenge

There are many benefits to smiling including:

Smiling can add 7 years to your life

Can reduce cancer risk

Reduces stress

Lowers blood pressure and anxiety

helps to boost your mood

Raises confidence level

Improves memory

Improves blood circulation

Waking up smiling helps to start your day off right. This means by waking up with a smile on your face, you are able to lower the stress levels before the day begins. Some people may start the day, thinking about the challenges of the day, however when you begin to smile, you release serotonin which trigger happy chemicals in the brain.

How do you rewire your brain to wake up smiling in the morning?

The easiest way is to begin the night before. Instead of thinking about problems and challenges you may face in the morning, go to sleep thinking happy thoughts, as caregivers it is natural to plan the day and thinking about all of things you need to do or forgotten to do but when you start to think more about the positive achievements it makes it much more easier to wake up smiling. Another way is to think immediately when you first wake up about the people who you love. This automatically make help you to smile.

Don’t expect it to happen overnight as it takes time for a new behavior to become a habit. Give it a try to see what happens.

Post navigation

2 thoughts on “The Self Care 12-Week Challenge (Week 1)”

Thanks for the collection of resources. Some days (especially in this SAD season), it is difficult to focus on self-care. It’s easier to just wallow without any plan for getting out. But, it’s important for myself and those I care for that I get lifted up out of the lows.

Thanks so much Wayne. so often in human services and in life, we put others before us and forget all to easy the importance of caring for ourselves first. I do hope you will find all future post helpful.